Drought dries rural wells, residents carry water in buckets

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Yolanda Serrato, 54, is photographed in the front yard of her home on Monday, Nov. 17, 2014, in East Porterville, Calif. Serrato is one of many East Porterville residents who has had their water well run dry. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)

Olivia Vargas, 70, holds her grandson Dominic, 1, as she stands at her kitchen sink on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2014, in East Porterville, Calif. Vargas is one of many East Porterville residents who has had their water well run dry. With no running water in her home, Vargas has had to fill five-gallon buckets from a donated water tank in her front yard, and carry the water inside to use for washing her dishes, for use in toilets and for showers. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)

The water vanished from Olivia Vargas’ modest East Porterville home on an ordinary morning as she was rinsing her breakfast dishes. It left Yolanda Serrato’s house just as suddenly, sputtering, then stopping, as she held a garden hose. Soon, the faucets at Iglesia Emmanuel went dry as parishioners tried to clean up after Sunday services.

Ten miles away, Ron and Cheryl Perine poured two glasses of water to drink — and watched in disbelief as sand settled to the bottom.

“It was devastating,” said Cheryl Perine, 67, whose well has supported her family, a few dogs and a small flock of chickens for 38 years. “You always think it’s not going to happen to you.

“It’s like living in the Dust Bowl.”

As California struggles through the drought, the first to suffer are rural residents with shallow private wells and limited incomes. They live in cabins in Modoc County, among the golden rolling hills of Paso Robles, in the farmworker towns of the San Joaquin Valley and a chaparral-covered valley in northern Los Angeles County. Their growing travails may presage the spreading disruption of Californians’ everyday lives if the drought — now in its third year — persists.

“We welcome the rain, and some wells might rise for a little while, but it doesn’t solve the permanent problem. People still don’t have water,” said Elva Beltran, director of the Porterville Area Coordinating Council, a faith-based nonprofit that serves needy families in southeastern Tulare County.

Only hours from Silicon Valley and Hollywood, in a state with the eighth-largest economy in the world, these desperate Californians are getting water in ways usually seen only in developing nations. They take water donated by charities or governments and store it in bottles, buckets, barrels and horse troughs.

More than 1,480 domestic well failures in 36 counties have been reported to the state, with more than half of these reports generated in Tulare County, according to a report released Tuesday by the state Department of Water Resources. Other counties facing well problems are Madera, Butte, Fresno, Inyo and Tehama.

The report, ordered by Gov. Jerry Brown, describes groundwater levels that have plummeted to all-time lows in many areas. In some communities in the San Joaquin Valley, groundwater has fallen more than 100 feet below previous record-setting levels.

But because wells are on private property and dry wells are rarely reported, the real number is likely far greater, according to the state. The drought has revealed the vulnerabilities of these small systems, which tend to be located in rural areas with limited finances and few opportunities to connect with more reliable systems.

Many more failures are expected, because winter storms cannot quickly replenish the overtapped underground water supply that has sunk so low.

Other wells are at such low capacity that they’ve become contaminated with bacteria and nitrates. One community has been forced to use an old backup well with a high arsenic level.

The reasons for failures are numerous: lack of money to deepen or improve wells, aging infrastructure, pollution and changes in drinking water quality standards that make once-adequate wells unhealthy now.

“They’re older wells, practically hand dug, and not deep,” said Warren Farnam, director of the Department of Environmental Health for Modoc County, where residents of the tiny town of Day — population 300 to 500 — have lost once-reliable wells.

“Wells cost money and once you hit good water, you stop,” he said.

“But that was before irrigation, community water systems and groundwater changes,” Farnam said, ticking off factors that lead to well failure.

Sanger resident Neeley Keeney, who delivers bulk water where wells have gone dry, is working seven days a week.

“I just get more and more customers every year,” said Keeney, of NRK Services Inc. He sells Clovis city water to rural residents in Madera, Chowchilla, Three Rivers, Visalia, Tulare and Lemoore. “The water is disappearing. Nobody ever thought it would happen. But it’s caught up to us.”

In these small towns, well users are often poor, disabled or elderly — and the daily hunt for water stresses their already tough lives.

Plastic bottles clutter Vargas’ kitchen, and buckets line the front porch. The 70-year-old widow, who is stiff with arthritis, lost her well in June and carried her water from a water tank in her yard until volunteers arrived to hook up temporary plumbing.

“The buckets are heavy, but I have to do it” if her son isn’t there to help, she said through a translator as the volunteers worked outside. “I have to get it outside, then bring it inside, to bathe, to use the toilet.”

Serrato also carries her domestic water to her house. Her farmworker husband leaves for the fields at 5 a.m., so she wakes with him and gets a bucket for washing and the toilet. More buckets are needed as other family members leave for work and school, then return. A next-door neighbor with a working well lets them run a hose from his water at night, so they are spared going outside for water in the dark and cold.

“Six to seven hours a day — moving water. It’s exhausting, a full-time job,” said Cheryl Perine, at the 10-acre plot on the Tule River she shares with two 8-year-olds and her husband, Ron, a disabled, retired Vietnam War veteran.

Cheryl remembers catching tadpoles and wading in the Tule River. You could see your reflection only 10 feet down in the family well, she said.

Now the river is dry, diverted upstream and split into many channels, disappearing into the irrigation and drainage canals that support the region’s vast agricultural economy.

Ingenuity — and the community’s generosity — have kept the Perine family going. Several times a week, they drive their truck to pick up water from a friend and donations of water from the Porterville Area Coordinating Council.

“You realize you have to do something,” said Cheryl. “You can’t just sit and wallow.”

They stored drinking water in blue 55-gallon drums, then poured it into Igloo containers and Tupperware bowls for household use. Nonpotable water went into a horse trough and white drums on the west side of the home, where the sun warmed it. That water was pumped up to the roof and piped back down to a portable outdoor shower.

They bought a Porta-Potty for $250, and paid $40 a month to have it emptied.

Desperate, they finally found a driller willing to put them on the top of his list. Their new well — three times deeper than their original one — cost $21,000. They’ve taken two loans to pay for it.

Even an entire community of 1,000 residents is struggling with a dry well. In Alpaugh, a hardscrabble Tulare Basin farmworker town surrounded by thirsty pistachio orchards, the water table has dropped a stunning 140 feet in two years, said John Burchard, who manages the local water supply. Until the town’s primary well is deepened, it must rely on an old backup well — which exceeds federal safety standards for arsenic.

At least two other Tulare towns face similar plights. Poplar relies on a backup, nitrate-contaminated well. Nearby Cutler supplements its failing primary well with backup water contaminated by the pesticide dibromochloropropane.

All over the state, volunteers and government agencies are donating time and labor to ease the spreading effects of drought. Groups such as the Porterville Area Coordinating Council have given away thousands of dollars worth of water tanks, bottled water and water-saving items such as dry shampoo.

International relief organizations such as Convoy of Hope have promised the southern San Joaquin Valley 17 tractor trailers of bottled water and supplies.

Households without running water may benefit from the governor’s executive order that uses the state Disaster Assistance Act to give them drinking and sanitation water. It also extends the state’s ban on price gouging during emergencies.

The state is identifying where domestic water is running short and working with local governments and agencies to find a supply. In September, the governor signed legislation requiring better groundwater management, but that will take years to implement.

To the exhausted communities, such steps are welcome — but a solution seems far away.

As he watched 26 free new mobile showers — temporarily hooked up to city water and utilities — open in the field next to Iglesia Emmanuel, Pastor Roman Hernandez turned and wiped away a tear.

He knows it’s not a long-term fix. That would require a $4,000 deepening of the well for his congregation of poor farmworkers. Or the willingness of Porterville to permanently share its water, connecting East Porterville to the city’s water main.

But it will help get them through the winter.

“We’re so grateful,” he said. “We pray, every night, for rain. But now we’re on our knees.”